


The factory of freaks

by Sangvinsk



Category: The Island of Dr. Moreau- H.G.Wells
Genre: First Person Perspective, Gen, Monsters, Steampunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 09:49:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10614408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sangvinsk/pseuds/Sangvinsk
Summary: Edward Pendrick was a broken man. We know that following his escape from the island, he feigned amnesia and withdrew from human society. Where, then, did the book come from? And what happened to the tortured creations of Dr. Moreau? In a letter addressed to an old friend, Thomas Pendrick recalls the aftermath of his uncle's adventures.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own H.G. Wells masterworks- Indeed, in most parts of the world, it is in common domain. I also don't own the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, referenced on the basis that no Victorian setting would be complete without them. I briefly toyed with the idea of claiming ownership of the Habsburg Empire, but the last Austrian elections were too close for comfort, so I won't claim that either. 
> 
> I take two artistic liberties: First, that the protagonist of the book stayed in London rather than withdraw to the countryside, and second, that he had a nephew.

  
My dear professor Pendleberry!

I have followed with great enthusiasm and enjoyment the chronicles of your endeavours on the African continent. Like most of London, I eagerly look forward to each new instalment in the Times, and I have also had the privilege to inspect some of the exquisitely wrought ebony statues that you have sent back. It was our mutual friend Mister Greycart of the British museum that furnished me with this opportunity, and he has instructed me to bring you his most sincere greetings and regards.

It is indeed an age of exploration that we live in, and you have often vouchsafed to me privately that you have little patients with the sedentary life enjoyed by so many of our citizens. England, it seems, has become quite tedious to the adventuring spirit, and so it is little wonder that the best and the brightest go abroad to seek excitement elsewhere. It is upon this matter that I write to you today. I shall not bore you with the trifling London gossip, nor its fashions and scandals. No, old friend, the spirit moves me to report an adventure of my own.

You smirk, no doubt, worthy Pendleberry. You are a good man, but I myself confess the idea to be laughable. Not only that some adventure of gothic and bizarre proportions should take place here, in the heart of our Empire, but that it should happen to me, Thomas Pendrick, by far the most sluggish of its servants. I have grown no more adventurous now than I were during our time at Oxford, prone as I was to snuggle down before fireplace with an old tome of forgotten lore rather than brave the rugby field or the seasonal snow. If anything, my sloth has increased, and I live a steady life in London, rarely shifting from my established route between my humble apartments and the Diogenes Club. Save for the occasional art museum or concert, such would have been my lot in life until my death, if it had not been for the passing of my uncle Edward.

I have told you of my uncle Edward, have I not? Like myself he was a gentleman of modest, yet independent means. A drone, if you will, in this great hive we call London. Indeed, Father was wont to remark that the only difference between us was that he in his idleness had turned to Natural Science while I, as you know, have devoted my life to linguistics and the tongues of dead civilisations. From what I have heard, his life up until that faithful shipwreck had mirrored mine almost exactly. I knew only of it afterwards, of course, but I have always held him in the highest regard, which is why the news of his murder caught me by such surprise.

"Murdered?" I cried at the time. "By whom?"

A foolish question. Had I been more myself, I should have realised it at once. As it were, the uniformed and whiskered policeman standing before me on my Persian rug could only politely reply that 'enquiries were proceeding' and could I please attend at the murder scene to determine if anything was missing.

I confess I felt faint at the prospect. I have not your constitution, dear Pendleberry, and I am quite unfamiliar with death. But every Englishman worth his salt must find some iron in his soul when duty calls. I therefore acquiesced to the policeman's request and, fortifying myself with a small brandy, rang for the housemaid to bring me my coat and hat.

Poor uncle Edward, I knew him well. Edward Pendrick, for so was his full name, was a man of taste and breeding. Those that knew him before the incident tells of a man that was.... listless, it is true, but also devoted to the intellectual spheres of life. A self proclaimed dilettante in science, yet a man of confidence, observational skill and even some degree of temper.

After the sea journey, he was... changed.

His ship sank, somewhere upon the journey. I do not recall why, precisely, but perhaps I have never been told. Dear Edward survived, of course, and made it back to England, but he was forever a changed man: Whereas once he had sought out the company of others, he now confined himself to his chambers, seldom walking out in public. He never entertained in any large capacity, and had few close friends. Indeed, now that I think of it, it is scarcely any wonder that the police came to me when the housekeeper discovered the body. I do honestly believe that in his later years, I was the only living creature he endured. For some time, even I had only been allowed as a sort of sufferance. His apartment was quite dark, with the blinds always drawn, the door always locked and - most disturbing of all- usually with something heavy pushed before it. It was as if he feared something, something more than men and steel.

I did not impart this information to the policemen escorting me to the flat. Oh, chastise me of you wish, Pendleberry, but one does not wish to see one's relatives slandered posthumously, his idiosyncrasies the butt of crude jokes. I judge them too harshly, perhaps, but then and there there was something brutish about the heavyset officers of the law, standing silently in my uncles study as I moved about it. They had concluded already that this was a robbery gone wrong -a robbery most savage- and did not deviate from this conclusion, no matter how much I pressed upon them that despite the broken pottery and scattered books, it was evident that nothing of value was taken. Poor Uncle Edward had feared for his life and feared rightly, and I, his last remaining conduit to the outside world, had dismissed it as paranoia. The body, beaten and broken, had already been removed, and I found myself wandering his little flat despondently, searching for some glimmer of the tale that now eluded me, the tale of Edward Pendrick.

It was during these wanderings that two strange things came to my attention.

The first of these was a very small book, lodged almost violently behind a large copper statue. Curious, I picked it from its place, and opening it at random, I could recognise my uncle's handwriting:

" _His is the house of pain  
His is the hand that makes..._ "

The second thing to come to my attention was the clattering.

Looking up from the strange verses I saw a heavy, iron door, presumably leading from my uncle's chambers to some form of communal washing room. Upon trying the handle, I found it to my amazement to be unlocked, quite contrary to my late uncle's fastidious insistence upon personal safety. Ducking my head a little, I entered the doorway and came out into a small room built from red brick, its starkness contrasting disturbingly to the relative opulence of the study. There were scratched and broken closets around the walls, a washing tin at one end, and an open drain in the centre of the room, with the lid moved away.

There were no windows in the little room, and in the chambers beyond my uncle had been most meticulous in barring every possible entrance from the inside. What puzzled the keen inspectors behind me, therefore, was how the killer had entered the room. With the vague idea that my uncle's assassin could have risen from the sordid underbelly of the city like some vengeful Poseidon, I knelt down by the drain. I dismissed the idea immediately. Not only was the hole too cramped to allow a grown man to squeeze through, the pipe bent quite sharply some two feet down. Not even a gymnast would be able to contort himself sufficiently to make this opening his entrance and departure.

Hearing another scratch, I rose, looking about myself. The noise had reminded me why I had entered the room to begin with, and I looked at the closets with a frown. Acting on impulse, I made my way to the wall where they stood. I opened them one by one. The first was empty. The second was filled with linen. In the third one was... a girl.

She looked quite young, squeezed into the corner of the cabinet. She was clearly working class: Her coarse clothing and sooth-covered face made that abundantly clear. She was dressed in a man's worker's overalls, and had it not been for the mop of red hair tied in a messy bun at the back, I should have taken her for a boy. I stared at her and she at me, and neither of us said anything.

"Have you found something, sir?"

I jumped at the sound, so engrossed in my investigations that I had quite forgotten I was not alone. Turning around, I faced the whiskered policeman that had brought me there. My heart raced for a moment, staring at him.

What happened next is as illogical as it proved fortuitous: I shook my head, closing the cabinet.

"Nothing" I replied. "Just some linen, that's all."

\---  
  
You may well ask, dear Pendleberry, why I would do such a thing. At the time, I would not have been able to tell you. The girl herself asked me some time later, at which point I was able to articulate what my subconsciousness had absorbed and convinced me of her innocence: Her face and her clothes were covered in soot.

But I get ahead of myself.

Satisfied that nothing was missing, the policemen thanked me politely for my time. I, on my part, asked simply to be allowed to bring home the little book, the lines of which I confessed had intrigued me. They appeared quite uninterested; to their mind, it was a crime of greed and brutality, one in which books had a minor part to play at most. They escorted me through the London smog to my chambers, where I locked the doors as carefully as poor Edward had. It was only when I had secured to my satisfaction my isolation from the world at large that I began my inspection of the little book. My interested was peaked, I admitt, at the first line: It was indeed an account of my relative's shipwreck, all that time ago. I retired to my chair excitedly, lighting the candle on the mantlepiece. I perused the work thoroughly, with sinking stomach and growing unease.

It was short. I finished it in an evening.

Oh, Pendleberry, Pendleberry! Can you imagine my disappointment? The shame at my own vanity? For I had believed there was some mystery here that I alone saw, that my uncle's death was not due to some wandering brigand's impatience, but some strange adversary from foreign lands. As it turned out, my uncle had been quite mad; I had dined with a man who by all rights ought to be locked up in Bedlam. If he had not shown enough such tendencies in his daily life, the book confirmed it beyond any doubt: He was insane. He was well and truly mad. Whatever blackguard had ended his life, this villain had perhaps done an inadvertent kindness with his brutal act, ending a life trapped in self-concocted nightmares. Edward Pendrick had come home, but the shipwreck had forever trapped him in fear, an experience he had populated by the most grotesque and fantastical creatures.

Thus, at least, were my conclusions at the time. While I had hoped that the book would give some indication of my uncle's executioner, I now resolved to hide it away, to make sure no one saw this shameful evidence of a tortured man.

The events of that day- and in particular that evening- threw a gloom over my otherwise bright and carefree existence. I neglected to some extent my daily routine, and I regret to say, also my friends. I spent a lot of time brooding in my chambers, reflecting upon the frailness of the mind. I paced the floor of my comfortable little flat so extensively that my landlady became quite cross. Bereft of any punitive measures that would not harm her economically, she displayed her disapproval by neglecting to send up some small biscuits that usually accompanied my tea.

It seems absurd, but this refreshment-based revenge became my wake-up call. I could not allow myself to wallow in introspection: if my uncle had indeed gone mad in fear and isolation, to isolate myself was neither prudent nor logical. As luck would have it, that very night I had an engagement at the opera. I had toyed with the idea of not attending, but I had made an engagement to meet some old friends, and did not wish to appear a poor sport. In addition to this, _die Fledermaus_ was playing, and I hardly need tell you that I am unable to resist the works of Strauss.

Alas, for all my efforts, this musical jewel of the Habsburg capitol was wasted on me that evening. The music poured over me like water, like the waters that had once poured over uncle Edward. I flitted and moved in my seat, though thankfully my associates seemed not to notice.

As we poured into the grand bar of the opera house, decorated so beautifully with red velvet and gold, the conversation inevitably turned to the recent tragedy that had struck my immediate family. I answered their questions as best I could, but I had little enough information to yield: While I had made some minor inquiries into the progress of the case, I was quite surprised to hear that the murder was now being investigated by the Home Office, and that I was not to be party to its results. Why the government would find any interest in the passing of a London recluse, I had no idea, but I felt some comfort in the fact that any evidence of my uncle's failings would be kept quietly under wraps.

That day more than any day I rued the events at the Reichenbach falls, robbing England of the Great Detective. He, perhaps, could have shed some light upon poor Edward's death. As it was, there was nothing to be done. The otherwise admirable Chief Inspector Lestrade seemed grateful to shift the work, and I, it seemed, would be condemned to frustrating ignorance. I left before the opera was fully over, taking a handsome cab back to my apartments.

When I arrived there, I saw to my concern that the door had been forced open. Grabbing my cane anxiously, I looked about the street for any sign of burglars, but the street was clear: The dim outline of gaslights in the smog was all my eyes beheld. Fearing the worst for the landlady, I summoned up what little courage I possessed and made my way up the stairs.

The steps creaked loudly beneath my perfectly polished leather shoes, far louder than I had ever known them to creak before. With batted breath I moved past the closed door on the first floor, behind which I could only hope that my landlady and her domestic servant slumbered peacefully. I glanced up the stairs, and with rising fear noticed that my own door stood ajar. Sneaking up, I pushed it open gingerly.

The room beyond was a mess. My books had been torn out of the bookshelf, ripped apart page by page. The large Ming vase in which I always had fresh lilacs was smashed to a thousand pieces. By some cruel jest, my decanter of brandy stood untouched, standing on its silver plate on the mahogany table by the door as it always did.

The resemblance to the detritus littering my uncle's rooms did not escape me, and for a moment all I could do was stare. The thought was half formulated within me: _Why do they always throw the books on the floor?_

It was formulated, but not spoken. For as I stood there, floored by the destruction, a figure moved out of my bedroom.

It was a man, or what I thought was a man, clad head to toe in a long, beige trench coat, a large sixpence hat obscuring his features. He was staring at the floor as he moved, propelling himself in a shambling gate that I first attributed to inebriation. To the same cause I ascribed the strange sounds he emitted: It was as if he was muttering, though not in any language I could identify.

Naturally, I straightened up immediately. Such lowlifes, while perhaps physically intimidating, are thankfully indoctrinated with a deep sense of social hierarchy. The best way to approach a drunk is with clear authority, making it very clear who is in charge. I straightened my top hat and pointed at him with the hilt of my silver-tipped cane.

"Halt, blaggard!" I cried, infuriated. "Explain your presence!"

The man, or what I had thought was a man, stopped, tilting his head- and looked at me.

Pendleberry, I have often read, in the comfort of a pleasant breakfast nook, of your battles with lions and fierce jackals, the thrill and the fear of a big game hunt. You are a courageous man, sir, in the highest degree, and yet I suspect that even you would stand petrified at the sight that greeted me.

Rather than the swarthy skin of a low-life thief, I was face to face with the muzzle of a wolf, its yellow teeth barred in a snarl. The cheap hat slanted almost absurdly over the yellow, bloodshot eyes, and from its pockets the creature drew forth things that were as hairy as paws and as nimble as hands. It was an animal made to walk like a man, a grotesque mockery of God's creation.

I had but a moment to contemplate this abomination before the creature lunged at me, a thick, purple tongue protruding from the open maw. More by instinct than conscious thought, I grabbed the brandy bottle behind me and flunk it at the creature's face, where it smashed into a thousand pieces. Such was the fear-driven strength of the blow that it was thrown backwards, barreling into my cherrywood table, breaking it. It clawed at its face, where fine French liquor poured painfully into shallow gashes inflicted by Bohemian crystal. I shed not a tear for it, no more than I wasted time nor life in a futile attempt to fight. No, I dashed down the stairs, my thoughts now only of escape into the streets of London, streets that scarcely held such horrors as my homely hearth.

My advantage was precious, yet brief. Nearly before I had crossed the threshold of my house, I heard the heavy weight of a creature rushing down the stairs. I fled into the smog, allowing it to envelope me completely, but still I heard the hellish creature at my heels. I fancied I could feel its hot breath upon my neck. The mist that had at first been a blessing of concealment was soon a theatre of woe, an opaque hindrance that surely presented no impediment to the primitive beast that followed me. In desperation, I felt my way along the walls of the houses opposite my own, hoping to find some refuge there. My questioning hand landed upon an opening, a doorway with coarse wood in it. The door swung open at my touch, revealing a darkness as impenetrable as the smog itself, and I could feel hands, coarse, rough hands, pulling me in.

\---

What happened next is in many ways a blur. At some point, I must have hit my head, for I woke upon a cold, damp floor of smooth stone. The ache was unpleasant, but compared to the prospect of being eviscerated by a lycanthropic fiend it was infinitely bearable. The harsh light of burning wood penetrated my eyelids, and I opened my eyes. Pulling my top hat towards myself, I sat up, inspecting the crowd that surrounded me.

The men and women around me were human, there was no doubt about that, but a rough and uncouth lot, the type you see loading ships in the harbour or doing complicated things with heavy machinery. The reassuring presence of Homo Sapiens (though of an unwashed variety) was mildly dampened by their sheer number: They had crowded into the low basement to such an extent that I had trouble seeing the walls. Still, as I have previously stated, the working class craves the order of a rigid social hierarchy, and I felt instinctively that the last thing I ought to do was show weakness. I got up, dusting off my clothes with the keen awareness that my tailor-made suit was by far the most expensive thing in the room.

"I say?" I volunteered, keeping every trace of quiver from my voice. "What's all this then?"

My sole reply was a small rock tossed at me from somewhere in the back. I flinched back, involuntary, sparking a smattering of strained laughter. I blushed angrily, and struck my walking stick repeatedly against the stone floor.

"Oh come now, what have I ever done to you?"

"It ain't so much what you've done to us, guvenor" came a voice from behind me. "It's what your friends have been doin'."

I whirled around, and realised that I had not been lying in an open circle surrounded by labourers. Rather, I had been lying in a semicircle before a small, crude pedestal. Upon this makeshift throne, elevated some three feet off the ground, sat the girl from the closet. She was dressed in the self-same overalls, the same filthy shirt. The only difference was a pair of thick goggles that she had lifted to her forehead in response to the dim half-light of the room. Sitting crosslegged on a mat among the circle of workers she looked rather like a Hindu guru in the world's strangest Ashram. I stared at her with an open mouth, earning a cruel smirk in return.

"Yeah, didn' think you'd see me again, did ya, guv?"

I opened and closed my mouth a few times before replying.

"How did you get out of the flat?" I asked in the end. She shrugged.

"Same way as I got in. Waited for the fuzz to leave for their tea, then I snuck out the door. It ain't the sharpest knives in the drawer they puts on guard duty."

I rubbed my forehead and looked around me. When I looked up at the girl, she hadn't moved.

"Why did you save me?" I inquired.

This got a raised eyebrow from the girl, who spat thoughtfully over the side. I did little to hide my disgust at such unladylike behaviour, but she ignored it. Her lips parted to reveal a predatory grin.

"Who says you're saved, guv? We got you alone, and you can place me at a murder scene. I'd start worrying if I was you. Worry _deep_."

"True" I said slowly, wrinkling my forehead in perplexity. "Except you're not the one who killed my uncle."

There was a pause. Some of the men looked up at the platform, uncertainly. Strangely enough, her eyes seemed to darken.

"I could've killed him" she said, almost defensively.

"Maybe, but you didn't."

Flaring up, she jumped from the platform and approached me with some speed. From the depths of her overalls she produced a heavy wrench, which she brandished like a club. Relieved of her platform, her diminutive stature became obvious: she couldn't be more than five feet at most. However, what she lacked lacked in height she more than made up for with force of character. The wrench was thrust towards my face.

"Because I'm a girl?" She demanded.

"Because of the soot," I replied, self-explanatory.

This reply brought a puzzled pause in her wrath, and she stared at me in confusion. I took the opportunity to gently push the wrench away with my cane.

"Thought I did not see my uncle's body -a fact for which I shall be eternally grateful- I was exposed to the room in which he died. The walls, I am sorry to say, were splattered with blood. And yet, there was not a spot of blood on you."

She looked at me speculatively.

"I could've washed it off" she said at last, albeit half-heartedly.

"And replaced the soot upon your hands and face?" I retorted, and she nodded, begrudgingly.

Why she seemed so determined to cast herself as a suspect I do not know, but I suppose that any woman making her way in the coarse and brutal world of the proletariat eventually grows tired of being dismissed. She pocketed the wrench, returning to the platform, but did not ascend. She turned to me.

"You're smarter than you look" she remarked, and continued before I could figure out whether I should be flattered or offended: "So enlighten us, guv, why'd ya think you're here?"

I took a long look around the room, watching the hard but honest faces.

The girl by the pedestal was the youngest person in the room by far. The men and women around her looked able to twist iron with their bare hands, and yet they appeared more than happy to let this young woman do the talking. They were frightened. They were very frightened. The girl's question wasn't just idle chatter: they genuinely wanted to know what was going on.

"You said what had been done to 'us'" I said slowly, watching the impassive faces carefully. "But you are clearly not a Union or a Guild, or you would not have risked a kidnapping. Ergo, you are a looser confederacy, combined in common grief. A disparate group with a common goal, all of which suggests... that my uncle was not the first to be murdered, was he?"

The girl looked at me in some astonishment, then burst out laughing. Shaking her head, she jumped back up on the pedestal, kicking her legs idly in the air.

"Well, what have we here, a bona-fid genius! Should'a known you were clever first time I laid my peepers on you."

I paused, mentally trying to translate her statement into Queen's English.

"If it was the first time you saw me, what did you have to go by other than my looks" I asked at last. I got a grin in response.

" 'cause you were clever enough to leave me alone" she said jovially. Then her face turned serious. "And you're right. The toff wasn't the first one that got cut down, though he's the only one they'll investigate. There's been a string o' murders down by the docks. People missin', good, sober men that don't turn up for their shifts no more. But they turn up all right. Turn up in the river with their throat's torn, lookin' for all the world like the dogs have been goin' at 'em, 'cept there ain't no dog big enough in all of England, you mark my words on that. Somethin' is killing us off, and it ain't natural, none of it is. None of us knew what to do- till that uncle o' yours started showing up on the murder scenes."

"If you think he killed them, you're wrong" I said softly. She snorted.

"Did I say that I thought he killed them?" She demanded. "Did I? That man looked like a pale streak o' piss, no offence meant, and 'e had the hands of a woman to boot. No, but it's mighty weird when the upper crust comes Whitechapel way just when people start goin' missin'. So I goes to check him out, don't I? And what do I find there, 'cept another murder? A murder... and you, guvenor. So I has you watched. And sure as the baker sneaks sawdust in our bread, someone goes and trashes your house. So you'll forgive me, _sir_ , if I think you know more about this than we do."

I looked at the people around me. They didn't seem hostile, now that my eyes were adjusting to the light. Rather, they appeared... desperate. They _yearned_ for some sort of closure, some sort of explanation for what had been done to them. And I could give it to them, Pendleberry. I could help these poor folk find the truth of their murdered fellows.

And by Jove, I wish I couldn't.

"I do, yes" I replied. I gently felt the pocket on my jacket, where uncle Edward's book nestled peacefully. "I did not know until this evening, or rather, I had not believed that such a thing could be true. But before I divulge it, I ask that you help me find my uncle's murderer."

The girl spread her arms, widely.

"And how would you suggest we do that, mister? How can we tell you who the murderer is if we're waiting for you to tell us?"

"I am not asking you to tell me who did it" I said, wearily. "I ask that you help me find the place the murderer escaped to. Are any of you gentlemen acquainted with the local sewage system?"

There was some mumbled agreement and hesitant nods, all of which ended with a sharp look from the girl on the platform. Reluctantly, however, even she nodded.

"Then can you find out where the drain in my uncle's house comes out?"

She shrugged.

"Sure, but what will that do? It's too small for a murderer to get through."

"True" I agreed. "Not even a child could climb through there."

I looked at the assembled faces.

"Not a human child."

\---

She introduced herself as Esmerelda. No last name was given, nor did she seem to think it was expected of her. As enigmatic as her origins was her age: her appearance suggested someone quite young, and yet every man around her obeyed her with nary a thought. The only information that could be gleamed was that she was a mechanic of some kind, though to the best of my knowledge, no technical institution allows girls.

We spent little time in idle chatter, though. Our destination was quickly determined, and our small band made our way under the city.

Yes, Pendleberry, under the city. Our London is ancient, a thriving urban hub since the latter days of the Roman Empire. The ground beneath it is honeycombed like a worm-ridden apple, and the great men of Britain walk upon layer and layer of caverns. I found myself wishing I walked these halls not with labourers but with members of Parliament, men who praise our city as if it where Rome and they Cicero reborn. How their faces would blanch at the sight of its porous foundations, imagining it crumbling to send men and women shrieking into the detritus of the abyss, a second Atlantis- on land!

But let me dispel their concerns, and yours, if you had any: the tunnels I saw were quite well built, made of quality stone and architecture. I let my eyes roam admiringly over the masonry, reflecting as I did so on the sketches I had seen of ancient Mesopotamian temples. I became aware that the girl was looking at me, curiously.

"You're a clever one, aint'cha?"

"I do my best" I responded, diplomatically. The tunnel started to slope downwards, and the lanterns carried by the men around us illuminated damp stone. We must have looked an odd pair, the girl and I: Her, unkempt, in crude clothes and swinging a heavy wrench, myself, dressed for the opera in a top hat, the shirttails of my jacket moving gently in the still air.

"How 'bout your uncle? Was he clever?"

I inclined my head in a non-committal gesture.

"I dear say he was, once upon a time. He graduated with quite fines grades from Cambridge, and if he had wanted to, I am sure he could have made a distinguished career."

"Why wouldn't he want to?"

"Well, he didn't need to. But also-" I stared ahead into the darkness. "- he was in a shipwreck."

"So?" The girl said, quite unimpressed. Clearly, she felt that something as small as a shipwreck should be taken in stride. I shook my head.

"It wasn't the shipwreck as such that traumatised him, it was what happened next" I explained. I took out the little book and waved it at her.

"In this journal, he describes how he made it to shore. His presumed sanctuary turned out to be a small island inhabited by a strange doctor, his assistance, and a number of... strange individuals. These individuals, it eventually appeared, were not human, but had characteristics of swine, dogs, wolves..."

She stopped abruptly and threw me a hard look. I opened the book, moving through the pages at random, seeing neither it nor her.

"These were not some abomination of nature, nor demons of Hell, but of men. They had begun as simple animals, and the doctor of the island had sought to make them men by cutting their skin and realigning their muscles. He had altered them by means of vivisection, a means of torture undreamt of in Dante's inferno."

She rubbed her forehead, clearly perturbed by such atrocities. She looked up at me.

"That's impossible" she said, flatly.

"That's what I thought" I replied grimly. "Until I was attacked by one searching for the book."

She nodded begrudgingly, and stared off into the distance for a moment.

"Still, even if they're animals, what makes ya think one of 'em got in through that tiny drain?"

I kept quiet at that. My uncle had described such a creature in his journal, though he had never seen it. At one point, this wicked doctor had attempted to create something that was not human- a serpent with a human face, that had to be put down...

"Esme!"

The cry came from the front. It was a whispered cry, the type a man might utter when he wishes to call out, yet not be heard. The voice came from around the corner, where I could see a faint, yellow light. We hurried over to them.

If the creature in my chambers had seemed ungainly, clumsy and ferocious, this creature seemed simply... grotesque. It had a swine's head upon a man's body, with trotters protruding from the sleeves of its shirt. It was dressed in a white shirt, black pants and a black vest, in which a gold chain betrayed a watch in one pocket.

It lay still, its head caved in with a blunt instrument. The cause of its demise was easily divined: one of the men there was a burly blacksmith with arms bulging like coconuts. He held a large sledgehammer covered in blood. The massive man was shaking.

I think we were all in shock, standing there above the felled creature. Did we reflect, Pendleberry, upon our difference to it? Our similarity? This was no dumb beast: it had taken great care in maintaining its tattered clothes, which seemed better washed than those adorning many of my companions. So engrossed were we that we scarcely noticed that the hall in which we stood was illuminated not by our faint lanterns, but rather by a strong light from the chamber beyond. I was the first to turn my head in that direction, and all others followed.

The chamber before us was immense. It was high as a cathedral, and many pathways intersected here. Mezzanines and walkways climbed towards the distant ceiling, and the far wall was scarce to be glimpsed. For what reason it had been created in ages past I could not say, but it had clearly been adapted to a new purpose.

I had expected a small colony of monsters- sad, mad things that hunted by smell and ate the rats of the sewers. I had expected them to be escapees from the island who, by whatever means and for whatever alien purpose, had made their way to England. But the truth was much more alarming, Pendleberry, for they had escaped nothing and had not come from anywhere. No, my old friend, they had been bred right there, in the bowels of London!

The chamber was filled to the brim with machinery, metal rails with mining carts rattling along them. Massive furnaces and turbines powered the elevators, the cranes, everything mechanical needed to run this steam-powered purgatory. Pens of animals, cages with wolves, great gestation vats meant to breed forth God knows what! And the screams, Pendleberry, the screams! Screams that moved from howls of beasts to the shrieks of men.

Do you remember, Pendleberry, our discussions upon that Titan of science, Sir Isaac Newton? I admire him, as you well know, not merely for his keen and penetrating intellect, but also for the poetry in his soul. He uncovered the equations that define our world, and saw in this sublime elegance the face of an omnipresent God- an unmoving mover that sets the spheres of heaven upon their eternal dance. As his equal I would put only Charles Darwin, who has shown us how animals, in obedience to strict and logical rules, over generations changes from one form to the next. Like Newton's heavenly spheres, Darwinian evolution confirms the eternal glory of God, a creation that is continuously unfolding, changing and expanding. There is an underlying... order... in the universe before which all men stand humble...

In evolution, I see God's divine hand. In that cavern, a mockery of Plato's, I saw true blasphemy, God's creation mocked as animals were turned from one form to the next, not by natural law, but by the crude and vulgar hands of men.

Yes, Pendleberry, men! It was men that ran this modern Tartarus, that stoked the fires of Pandemonium and tortured the soulless beings within. There were heavyset mechanics, moving about their business. Men of breeding, clerks, by the looks of it, dressed in pin-strip suits, bowler hats and- almost comically- gas masks. There were doctors. There were scientists.

There were soldiers.

My old friend, my hand shakes as I write this, and I would not have imparted this information to you had I not been unwavering in my faith in your discretion. For what I saw beneath me were not Frenchmen or Prussians, not anarchists nor fanatics. No, it was England that ran this factory of freaks. It was England that bred monsters for its armies. There were not enough Christian men in the Empire, not enough askari in Africa nor sepoys in India: the need had been found to breed forth these abominations...

We stared down at the scene for the longest time, each of us unable to fathom that it was not simply a dream, a nightmare that harked from the depts of our souls. It was Esmeralda who took charge in the end, as I suspect it often is. Her jaw hardened, and I saw in those fiery eyes that her reaction to this held more clarity and more courage than you should find in any man in England. It was she who saw what must be done. It was she who knew that the river Thames ran above our heads, separated from this chamber by a number of intricate tunnels and storm drains that only the labourers knew of.

I hold my pen back here, lest this letter ever fall in the wrong hands. Suffice it to say that this hellish chamber is empty now, the unnatural taint washed clean by the waters of the river.

Phlegeton doused by Memnosyne.

There were repercussions, of course. People puzzled over the sudden drain in the river, and public outcry began once the bodies of these monsters were fished up at the docks. Questions have been asked in Parliament (I do not know if any blanched), and preachers have prophesied the end of the world.

But then again, preachers always do.

With this my letter ends, dear Pendleberry. I fear it has not been a pleasant one, and perhaps been a poor diversion in your travels. Nevertheless, I felt an unbearable need to tell you. Partly, this is because I must tell someone, or I shall up like poor old uncle Edward: a shut-in afraid of the shadows. But mainly because of where you are, old friend. For while it is my sincere belief that science is a boon to mankind, and that the steam engine heralds a new era of progress and civilisation that shall reach every corner of the globe, I know now that it also holds horrors.

So as you walk in that primordial jungle, that jungle which it is now said we all once emerged from, remember it. Preserve the horrors of the natural world in your memory, like the shards of bygone civilisations are preserved in our museums. For it is the horrors of that jungle we once sought to escape, to build up a new and better world of bricks and steel. It seems to me now that we have simply rebuilt the jungle, horror and all, upon our home shores.

So preserve the memory of our origins, Pendleberry. The Age of Steam has just begun.

 

I remain, sir, your devoted friend,

Thomas Pendrick


End file.
